I have a Dell laptop with XP sp3 installed and it managed to get some viruses, which after running Malawarebytes quick scan and removing them it won't start up properly.It came up with the activation of windows box, when i goto activate it says already activated and then just hangs on an empty desktop picture with no icons, taskbar, etc but when trying to reboot into safe mode it says cannot logon because windows needs activating, and so the problem is i am now unable to log into normal or safe mode?Any help is greatly appreciated, i have also tried to repair the instal but is the same, i am in a right mess with it??

no its not, after the logon screen its says it needs activating, then when you click next it says windows is already activated but then just hangs with a blank desktop picture, if you try to reboot into safe mode as i mentioned before it still thinks it needs activating so won't boot to safe but asks for a restarttoormal mode...... Frustrating!

Have gone down the reload the lot route, was so fed up with it!! Thanks for the help though.It was running real slow and with only minimal to backup it seems worth it in the long run to do the fresh install.